Configuration Manager 1602- backup your CD.Latest folder

Today I got a support case where I had to restore my first ConfigMgr Current Branch 1602.

No prob, we do have a nice SQL DB backup of the ConfigMgr database.

Let’s do the following:

1. Close all consoles
2. Stop all SMS Services (will also be done by the recovery wizard)
3. Start the setup.exe from the CD.Latest (“Your Install Directory”\Microsoft Configuration Manager\cd.latest\SMSSETUP\BIN\X64)

But here I got stock. The “Recovery Site” option was greyed out. Of course I tried different ways to start the splash.hta or the setup.exe using admin rights. No way. The option was never available.

During research I found that the Site Maintenance job in ConfigMgr is also creating a folder called CD.Latest. But the customer did never activate the Site Maintenance job as they use a third party backup solution to backup the SQL Databases.

However, I configured the Site Maintenance Task and started the SMS_SITE_BACKUP service. This was creating the CD.Latest folder under my backup folder.

With this version of the setup.exe file could restore the database .

What we did:

–          Stopped all services
–          Detached the no longer needed CM_”SiteCode” database from the SQL Server using the SQL Server Management Studio
–          Restored the good database from Sunday (used the SQL option “override existing files”)
–          Started CD.Latest from the newly created backup folder (F:\Backup\W01Backup\CD.Latest)
–          Used “Site Database that has manually recovered” as we restored it in SQL

Conclusion

Please be aware of a very important change required to your backup strategy in Configuration Manager 1511, 1602 (and later). As you know regular upgrades will be available for the product (every 4 months or so) and you will be able to upgrade using update packages in the “Updates and Servicing” node of the Administration > Cloud Services workspace.

–          Make sure you enable the “Site Maintenance” Job for the site.
–          Backup the Backup folder as this will allow you to restore the ConfigMgr 1602 server in case of a bare metal restore

This folder will be required when you are recovering a failed site so it must be included in a backup strategy. Note that the built in backup maintenance task will back up this folder automatically. Also note that there is no point in backing up this folder once. It must be ongoing because, when upgrades are installed, Configuration Manager also updates the CD.Latest folder with the current files.

Find more informations on TechNet:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt703293.aspx